What is it about?
This volume is based on a selection of six papers presented at the workshop at the University of Nurnberg in 2014. M. Streck (Leipzig) on Akkadian; S. Alvestad and L. Edzard (Oslo) on Biblical Hebrew from a modern Slavic perspective; N. Boneh (Jerusalem) on Modern Hebrew; M. Hanitsch (Erlangen-Nurnberg) on New Arabic; S. Fakhry (Erlangen) on Baghdad Arabic; and R. Meyer (Addis Ababa) on Semitic languages of Ethiopia.
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Why is it important?
M. Streck addresses the issue of two different means of expressing tense/aspect by verbal forms and temporal adverbs. While the former has been extensively studied, the latter represents a significant first step towards a comprehensive analysis of temporal adverbs in Akkadian. S. Alvested and L. Edzard attempt to explore to which degree the advanced discussion of aspect in the Slavic languages can be applied "in a meaningful way" to Semitic, specifically to Biblical Hebrew modal forms). N. Boneh elucidates how the category of aspect is to be understood in Modern Hebrew (a language which does not mark grammatical aspect morphologically) arguing that its verbal system encodes tense and is "underspecified" for aspect. A more "traditional" view is that QATAL denotes perfective, QOTEL imperfective aspect and neither of them is specified for tense. M. Hanitsch studies the diachrony of the interaction of grammatical and lexical aspect in eight varieties of New Arabic during their transition from the Old through Proto-New Arabic and finally New Arabic stage. S. Fakhry presents the three aspectual categories (perfect, imperfect, participle) in a useful tabular form distinguishing between auxiliaries and non-inflectable "modificators". R. Meyer, provides typological evidence for the primacy of aspect over tense and concludes his detailed expose by demonstrating that the Geez system is based on a simple binary opposition of aspect, while Modern Ethiosemitic languages (Tigre, Amharic, Gurage) display a tripartite system in which the tenseless perfective conjugation contrasts with a past and non-past imperfective.
Perspectives
This collection is a welcome contribution devoted to the study of one of the most demanding fields in Semitic linguistics - the synchronic and diachronic morpho-syntax of tense and aspect. It will be read by specialists in Semitic and Afro-Asiatic linguistics, and it should be of interest to scholars of general and historical linguistics.
Dr Vit M. Bubenik
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Edzard, Lutz (Hg.): The Morpho-Syntactic and Lexical Encoding of Tense and Aspect in Semitic. Proceedings of the Erlangen Workshop on April 26, 2014. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2016. 239 S. 8° = Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 104. Brosch. € 5..., Orientalistische Literaturzeitung, May 2019, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1515/olzg-2019-0013.
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